


Initiate

by whereismygarden



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dry Humping, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Mild Blood, Nipple Play, Not Canon Compliant, Prompt Fill, Rites of Passage, Scarification, Virgin Ben Solo, not the canon Jedi Order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26554015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: Rey expects to congratulate her old friend Ben after he becomes a Jedi Master. But the ritual didn't go as it was supposed to.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	Initiate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/gifts), [bittersnake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake/gifts).



> Written as a prompt fill for Bombastique and bittersnake, who asked for, in succession, "Ben Solo has extremely sensitive nipples" then "Ben Solo with nipple piercings" then, after hearing my consternation, "Rey must console a devastated Ben Solo who has failed the final test to become a Jedi Master, getting his nipples pierced. They’re just too sensitive! Rey must show him that he has a place in the Galaxy outside the Jedi Order, and that he has perfect nips!"
> 
> I won't be held responsible for any of my bad choices here.
> 
> There is some discussion of ritual tattooing/scarification in negative terms ahead, as well as descriptions (not too graphic but ymmv of course) of blood and injury.

Rey waits for him at the cusp of the cliff, where she always does. The sun is going down and the side he walks up is already in the dark, so she stretches out on the sweet-smelling grasses and waits for him.

He comes later than expected, when the sky is an indescribable glowing blue-black with only faint light at the horizon. Rey sits up and flicks on her lantern when she hears Ben’s familiar, slightly dragging tread on the path.

“Oh!” she says, because he looks—not as she expected. For one thing, he’s forgone his shirt and long over-robe, and is just wearing the loose trousers that close tightly around his knees. For another, his face looks haggard and ashamed and his eyes are red. But mostly, there’s a lot more blood than she expected.

~

Rey met Ben when she was just fourteen, and intruded on “his” meditation space, across the river and over the ridge from the Jedi temple. She was afraid: he was a young man then, with boyish features and short hair, but still tall and imposing in his white vestments. Scary, too, were the ritual tattoos of his Order that stretched across his pale face: horizontal lines across his brow, that swept downward over the temples and onto the cheeks. The effect was that of a mask, and the translucent black fabric over his eyes that _she_ couldn’t see through diminished the effect of his large ears and trembling mouth.

He explained, eventually, that as a Jedi, the lines over his body were meditation tools, paths to send the Force through him with ease. Rey grew accustomed to them, and then to the bands of ink that wrapped his arms as he rose in status as a Knight.

“You should come train,” he told her, when she was eighteen. “You could learn to touch the Force. I can sense it.”

“And live in a temple and read and meditate and exercise all day?” Rey, who only went into the temple from the town when they needed someone to fix the generator, rolled her eyes. “No thank you.” Everyone there wore the same white and tan clothes: sometimes a black robe, sometimes sandals instead of flat cloth shoes. They all ate the same diet of eggs, grains, and vegetables grown there. They all, as far as she could tell, rose before sunrise. No, Rey would stick to her wanderings from village to village, repairing machines. At least she could drink tea.

“Look,” Ben said, and stood behind her, lifting one of her arms and stretching his out next to it. “I’ll show you. I could teach you.”

The skin on the back of Rey’s neck prickled at his nearness. He opened his hand into a claw and she _felt_ it somehow, as he made her toolbox float up into the air. She shrieked and flung her hand down, and the toolbox fell to the ground with a clatter as well.

“See?” Ben said. “It comes easily to you.”

She shivered away from his voice rumbling in her ear, which was making her skin prickle for other reasons.

Another thing the people at the temple all did was abstain from sex. Ben didn’t even mean anything by his closeness.

~

Seven years after they met, Ben became a Knight of the highest order and acquired a triplet of silver metal hoops in his right ear, as well as stippled black dots all over his chest and upper back. Rey bit her lip and offered him illicit tea laced with illicit whiskey as he groaned and fidgeted and fanned himself shirtless under the summer sun the next day.

“I was used to the feeling of it on my arms,” he said, stretching them out. The black bands went down to his wrists and all the way up his biceps. “But I didn’t like it on my chest or my back.”

“What about the face ones?” Rey said.

“I passed out for those. I was eighteen.” He took a sip of her drink and winced, taking out his water bottle. “And beforehand, I did a meditation submerged in an ice bath for an hour. That helped too.”

Rey was aghast. She spit on the ground to show her feelings about the Jedi, and about Ben’s particular order, and sat down next to him. The new marks on his chest were each made of four strokes, arranged in diamonds that were each a single dot that formed the pattern. These converged and thickened on the left side, over the heart. They were still slightly raised and reddened.

Rey reached her hand out and placed it carefully over his heart, making him jump and hiss. His skin was hot to the touch.

“Sorry—” she said, but didn’t move her hand away, just trailed it down his side, where there were no marks and the skin was smooth and unmarred over the thick muscle.

“Rey,” Ben said, uncertain but warning. She leaned closer, put her hand on his hip. She could see his erection, unsubtle in the loose undyed trousers he was wearing. Her mouth watered.

“What?” she said. “I haven’t taken any vows. And you’re drinking my tea. That’s against the rules, too.”

“There’s a difference,” Ben said, and moved her hand away with a swift movement. Rey, stung and rejected, kicked the dirt and stood up from beside him.

“Fine,” she said. “Enjoy your new status, Knight.”

~

Ben sinks to his knees in the grass, and Rey turned up the brightness of her lamp until they were sitting in false daylight.

“Ben—” she puts her hands over her mouth.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he mumbles. “I didn’t finish.”

“What do you mean?” Rey crouches beside him. She didn’t think to bring a medkit to their usual meeting.

“I’m not a Master,” he tells her.

Rey runs her finger over his abdomen, and it comes back bloody. The wounds are at the tops of his pectorals and over his collarbones, little round punches of missing flesh, straight cuts, and a red welt at each shoulder that looks like a burn. Someone applied some sort of resin to them, but they’re still bleeding. Ben is streaked red from his shoulders to his waist, where the sash around his trousers is darkening.

“They _didn’t finish_?” she asked, stripping off her jacket and wiping down the lower part of his chest and stomach, checking for more wounds. “What do you mean? They were going to do _more?_ ”

Her water bottle is full, and she wets the sleeve of her jacket, scrubs at the residues of blood, presses the whole thing against him to keep catching the blood. She’ll use her shirt for the areas that need a delicate touch.

“I couldn’t take the pain,” he says sorrowfully, and there are tears streaking out of his eyes.

“To hell with the pain,” Rey responds fiercely. “They’ve been torturing you for _years._ ”

“It makes me strong with the Force,” he argues, and sniffles as she takes her shirt off and begins ripping it into bandages.

She needs to clean the wounds, too. She takes the long knife she uses for cutting through dense brush and helps herself to the long, clean ends of Ben’s sash. He doesn’t seem to notice, hands over his face as he weeps.

She pours some water onto the cloth and dabs at the wounds over his pectorals, alternating punches and cuts. The yellowish resin is resistant to the water.

“Don’t wash it off,” Ben says, whipping his head up and knocking her hands away.

“You’re still bleeding,” Rey protests.

“Only a little. The sap prevents infection and it needs to scar.”

It makes sense, really, considering that the tattoos all over Ben are just colored scars, but her stomach is twisting as she sees the blood and imagines the thick, rough tissue that will form over the cuts.

“I’m cleaning off the burns,” she tries to insist, but he winces and groans when she comes close with the wet cloth. So she is reduced to just placing her dry bandages over the wounds, and hoping the bleeding stops soon.

Ben lies on his back in the grass and tilts his head at her, squinting.

“Where’s your shirt?” he asks, sounding scandalized.

“On you,” she says. He looks at her with dazed, liquid eyes. “Rest,” she instructs, and turns the lamp down.

She waits while he sleeps, watching him. The sleep seems fitful, and only lasts a few hours.

He sits up, and Rey stirs from her quiet pose nearby.

“How do you feel?”

“Terrible,” he grunts.

“Maybe we should go into town for medicine,” Rey worries. “You could be infected.”

“Not that kind of terrible,” he clarifies, and his face is bleak.

“You said you didn’t become a Master after all?”

“No,” he says. “It was too painful. After this,” and he gestures to his upper body, “I couldn’t finish.”

“What did they try to do?” Rey’s mind presents her with various terrifying prospects.

“A piercing,” Ben says dully. He touches the three small rings in his ear. “These didn’t hurt so much. But…” He trails off, blushing even in the reduced light. “The last one is over the heart.” He cupped his hand protectively over his chest, avoiding the bandages.

“And it hurt too much?” Rey asks.

“I mean, it can hurt when it’s too cold out. Or from a new shirt. I knew it would hurt, but I thought I would endure it.”

Rey thinks.

“So, will you just be a Knight forever?”

“No. I can’t, I’m half made. I failed. I can’t stay with the Jedi. Do or do not. You can’t try and fail.”

“You’re not _half-made_ ,” Rey says, maybe too harshly, because she isn’t angry at him. “I know that. I’ve known you since before you were a Knight. You’ve been perfect the whole time.”

Ben sighs, with a waver to it, and Rey sees him move into a meditative pose to calm himself.

“I thought you were over thinking I was perfect,” he says finally, trying to smirk at her the way he did when he wanted to make a point about the Force to her. The lines around his face contort with his movement. “You’re pretty far past that old crush.”

Rey blinks, and huffs her breath out through her nose.

“I didn’t have a _crush_ on you Ben, I wanted to sleep with you.” She watches his eyes dart away from her chest, which is scarcely exposed in the simple band she’s wearing over her breasts. “Which is a normal thing for me to want, as a woman looking at a handsome man.”

Ben’s hands fidget in the grass.

“And I’m hardly past it, either,” she adds.

“You—” Ben starts to say something, but doesn’t finish. His face is stressed.

Rey takes pity on him. “What are you thinking?”

“Many things.” His fingers rip apart stems. “I always liked listening to you talk about all the different villages around here. When we went anywhere—the Knights—we went offworld. To ancient temples. Or libraries. Or battlefields. Not around here.”

“We’ll go,” Rey says soothingly.

“My life is over,” Ben says wretchedly. “I have nothing, just because I couldn’t stand a little pain.”

“Stop,” Rey insists, drawing close to him again. She reaches out, like she had once before, and puts her hand on his chest, feeling the faint raised marks of the tattoos under her fingertips. “It’s okay.”

She leans closer, and sees at his nipple, a little red stick-mark, as if someone had been positioning a needle. She brushes her thumb underneath, not quite touching it. Ben shifts a little at her touch.

“It hurt, here?” she asks. Ben nods, eyes wide. Rey tilts her head forward and breathes out over him, slowly, so it’s warm. Ben _yelps_ and jerks. Rey flinches away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you more!”

“You didn’t,” he cuts her off. “That didn’t—hurt. It felt good. It was surprising.”

He’s all bloody and dazed from his half-done ritual. Rey knows this, but she still feels rough hunger slither around inside her, hot and slow and insistent.

“Let me do it again,” she says, her voice coming out low and uneven.

After a moment, Ben nods at her.

“Lie back,” she tells him, and he does.

She kneels next to him, bends down and breathes out again, slow, over his nipple, and runs her thumb across his upper abdomen, just underneath, lightly enough that she sees his skin prickle. Then she leans over him and does the same to his other nipple, letting the ends of her hair tickle across his chest. Ben whimpers, a little whine that she hears catch in the back of his throat.

Rey can’t resist following this with a quick stream of air blown through rounded lips, and Ben makes noise again, very close to a moan.

“ _Rey_.” His voice is rough. She brushes the back of one finger over his left nipple, watches it tighten further, and squeezes her thighs together.

“Feel good still?”

“Yes,” he replies, raggedly, shifting in the grass. His eyes are closed, face screwed up tightly. She flicks her gaze downward for a moment. He’s getting hard, just a little.

“You want more?”

“Yes,” he says, and opens his eyes to look at her, tracking quickly over her face, her body, away, and back. He swallows and she watches his throat move and his lips press together.

She licks her thumb and rubs it gently over his nipple, a deliberate, slow gesture, and shudders when Ben moans and tosses his head.

“See?” Rey asks softly. “It’s not a bad thing to be sensitive here.” She breathes out, hot then cool, for the contrast with the wetness, and enjoys Ben’s stifled sounds. He’s jammed his fist against his mouth. She gently flicks across his other nipple with the pad of her finger at the same time and grins to herself when his hips jerk up. “It means I can do this to you.” She presses down, not too much, since he’s so sensitive, at the center of his nipple, and makes circles.

Ben writhes and curls to the side, then straightens onto his back with a grunt of pain.

_His shoulder_ , Rey thinks. _He put weight on it._

“Be careful,” she says. “You need help staying still?” She hooks her leg over his abdomen and slides over so she’s straddling him. It’s not very subtle, but she tries to avoid his erection for the most part.

“Uh—Rey—I don’t—” His hands clutch at her hips and drag her down against him, so his erection is pressed against her ass, separated by their clothes.

“You want me to get off of you?” she asks.

“No,” he says, and she lets herself relish the feeling of his fingers and hands, strong with years of weapon training, squeezing her hips too hard.

Then she bends her head down again and licks flat across his pectoral, finishing by dragging the tip of her tongue against the hardened, shrunken flesh of his nipple.

The sound that Ben makes is more of a growl, vibrating in his chest.

“Rey—that feels _too good—”_ his voice sounds panicked. Rey pulls back, then returns, teasing him with her tongue and fingertips on first one side, then the other. She avoids the bandages, stays focused on his nipples, on his abdomen, on stroking her hands over the muscles that stand out in his forearms as he grips her ass and thighs with iron-hard hands.

He shudders and jerks at every touch, sweat gathering on his face and neck. Rey watches raptly as she traces small circles around his nipple and he twists his head back and forth, as if trying to escape the sensation. The broken little sounds that fall from his lips are high and sharp, tiny sparkling jewels that Rey wants to collect and hoard. She can’t clearly see his face in this light, but his lips are shining wetly where he’s licked over them and his eyes, when open, are wide and frantic.

It’s so good, especially with Ben’s erection rubbing up against the cleft of her ass and against her cunt. She’s wet, wild with finally having him like she’s wanted for years, tender over his pain. Rey could do this forever, but she doesn’t think Ben can, not with how he’s starting to rock his hips up rhythmically.

“You feel good?” she asks again, pressing her lips soft and gentle against his nipple, then sucking a little. She’s going to leave marks on him, ones that will eventually fade, but she’s glad she’s leaving them anyway. Ben just keeps grinding up against her, urgent, panting and moaning into the night air.

“I think I’m going to—something’s going to happen,” he says, and Rey smiles into his chest, wiggling her ass against his erection a little more deliberately.

“Let it happen,” she says, and draws the backs of her fingernails firmly over the edges of his nipples, toys a little more ungently with the rough-soft flesh with her fingers and tongue. “Let something good happen, Ben, you deserve it.”

He seizes up and groans a moment later, long and drawn out, and Rey feels his cock twitching under his trousers. Hot come soaks through their layers a few moments later, as Ben goes limp and placid.

Rey shifts and sticks her hand down her own trousers: it takes her a few moments to come, because she’s turned on more than she can remember ever being in her life, but she’s so wet her fingers slide, frictionless, against her clit, until she rubs hard and fast. She comes with her face still pressed against Ben’s chest and his slackened fingers lingering on her hips.

She slides off of him a few minutes later, and wraps one arm around him.

“We should go home, so you can clean up and sleep. You need rest,” she says after a moment.

Ben turns his head.

“Hmm?” His voice is bleary.

“We should go,” she repeats.

“I can’t walk,” he says, and pulls her so her head is closer to him and nuzzles his face in her hair.

“Okay, we’ll wait a little while,” Rey concedes, because while she’s still buzzing a little, Ben’s eyes are drooping shut. Her bandages are still doing their job, and it’s a warm night.

She reaches out for the lantern, and it thunks into her hand.

“Hey,” Ben says. “I told you you could do that.”

“I knew I could do it,” Rey tells him, and turns the light off so that only the stars are gleaming down at them. “Don’t worry. Even if you’re not a Jedi anymore, you can still do it too.”

**Author's Note:**

> In case I didn't do a good job of describing it, Ben's face tattoos are supposed to look similar to his Kylo Ren mask.


End file.
